


Balcony Scene

by manquebusiness



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-30
Updated: 2018-05-05
Packaged: 2019-04-29 19:52:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14479962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manquebusiness/pseuds/manquebusiness
Summary: Romeo and Julietis overdone, and Tessa and Scott are too old for the parts anyway.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Who woulda thought I’d be popping my fanfiction cherry with RPF songfic? It’s a weird world, kids.

_A lovestruck Romeo sings the streets a serenade_  
_Laying everybody low with a love song that he made_  
_Finds a streetlight, steps out of the shade_  
_Says something like, You and me, babe, how about it?_

  

“No,” says Marina. “Is overdone.”

Scott snorts. “And _Carmen_ wasn’t?”

He and Tessa are sitting in the front row of the stands, skates off but obviously not yet dismissed. Marina eyes them from where she leans against the boards, cold as the ice behind her. It’s already been a shit day, hours of bobbled twizzles and choppy transitions, and all three of them were on edge even before Scott brought up the idea he and Tessa had been bouncing around.

“It wouldn’t be a straight _Romeo and Juliet_ ,” says Tessa. “We’d be doing a twist, reinventing the warhorse. Like you did for _Carmen_.” She bites her lip. Neither of them wants the results they got from _Carmen_ , and Scott can tell that this attempted flattery is costing her.

He doesn’t think it will work, and he’s right. “No,” says Marina again, for what is clearly the final time. “Too risky for Olympic year. You are too old anyway.” She peers at the two of them. “Too old for young love.”

This is the way it always is with Marina. When it comes to her, Scott will always be the reedy kid he was when they first came to Canton, seventeen and still waiting for puberty. Now he’s twenty-fucking-five years old, too old for Romeo but still too young to pick out his own goddamn music. Scott suppresses a bitter laugh, or tries to, at least.

Marina’s eyes narrow in response. “We find something for you,” she says. “Something Russian. Sochi judges want Russian.” She smiles, smugly nationalistic.

Scott doesn’t have to face Tessa to feel her warning look on him. A warning look nobody else would see, probably. It would be great if he had any kind of poker face at all, but Tessa’s is so good that it’s invisible. Everybody thinks he’s the moody one, that she’s always fitting herself around him, but what they don’t see is that he’s just reacting to her half the time. Maybe more than that.

Which is what’s happening now. Marina’s looking at Scott like he’s the problem, but the real tension is coming from Tessa. She’s like a frequency that nobody else can pick up on, but she’s broadcasting loud and clear to Scott. _This is what I mean_ , she’s saying. _She’s had Charlie and Meryl’s music planned for a year, so why is she just now picking our Olympic program out of a hat?_

Marina is talking about doing some sort of sequel to Mahler and Tessa is glaring about trusting the wrong people and Scott doesn’t know how to argue verbally with one and nonverbally with the other at the same time. He stands abruptly. “I gotta go,” he says, and immediately recognizes that it came out too sharp for Marina’s Old World sense of student-teacher hierarchy. He can’t deal with apologizing right now, so he adds, “Let us know when you’ve found the right piece” in the least sarcastic tone he can muster, and if that gets read as more moody Scott, then so be it.

He’s all the way out to the parking lot, hand on his car door, before he notices Tessa trailing behind him. “What?” he says, trying again to keep the snap out of his voice, and again not really succeeding.

Tessa raises an eyebrow. “You’re my ride, remember?”

“Right,” says Scott. Her car is in the shop. “Sorry.” He comes around to open the door for her and she climbs in, leaning across the seat to unlock his side. When he gets in, he slams the door a little harder than strictly necessary, then puts the key in the ignition but doesn’t turn it. He rests his head on the steering wheel instead, just gently enough to keep from honking the horn.

“We don’t have to go through it again,” he tells Tessa.

“It kind of seems like we do.”

“It’ll make you feel better?”

“It will.”

Scott sighs. “Then go ahead.”

Tessa starts to tick through the usual bullet points: the ISU hates back-to-back golds, has already shaped a narrative where Charlie and Meryl are the consistent technicians and they’re just artistic; between that story and Igor being gone, they haven’t been hitting their levels; now that the USFSA is covering Marina’s legal bills, Marina is American property, bought and paid for; other coaches have been sniffing around but if they’re going to switch, this is their absolute last chance, before the season starts.

Scott responds with the usual counters: no shit they’re more artistic, and Charlie and Meryl are only consistent because they’ve been doing the same twizzles for the last three years; all they need to get their levels up is a strong, injury-free season; they’ve been Marina’s favorites for the last nine years and suspecting her now is a crappy way to reward that loyalty; and anyway the whole thing is moot because leaving would make them look weak and Skate Canada wouldn’t support it.

It’s exhausting to keep going in circles like this, not only because of the repetition, but because none of this is what they’re really fighting about. What it comes down to is that Tessa thinks that Scott trusting Marina means that he’s not trusting her, and Scott thinks that’s absurd because obviously he trusts Tessa more than anyone. Absurd and a little insulting, because the fact that she could think that means that _she_ doesn’t trust _him_.

He lets Tessa worry at him anyway. Better for her to worry at him than to worry at herself like she usually does, pacing across her own nerves until they’re worn and frayed. He doesn’t blame her for her frustration. He wishes none of this mattered, that they could play the game straight, that the toxicity of skating politics hadn’t seeped so deeply into everything else that he and Chucky can’t even watch hockey together anymore. He wishes a lot of things.

But mostly he thinks that Tessa worries just to worry, that she has this idea that worrying is her job, how she proves to herself that she’s indispensable to the team. He’s spent their career trying not to notice that he’s the favorite, the one people come up to after competitions while Tessa stands next to him, small and ignored. Scott’s never been able to make her understand that anybody who makes her feel like she’s the one who’s lucky to have him is an idiot. That includes Igor bitching about her edges and Marina picking at her body and everyone else who’s stupid enough to think he could do any of this without her.

Nobody changes Tessa’s mind but Tessa, though, so she continues to try and earn her place in the partnership and he continues to try to absorb as much of it as he can, and in the end they wind up in the same place they always do.

“I guess we’re stuck,” she says, concedes. She’s run out of steam, and the air in the car is finally loosening.

“I don’t think it’ll be that bad,” says Scott, starting the engine. “I don’t think it’ll be bad at all, actually.” He looks behind him to pull out of the parking space, then at her as he shifts into drive. He smiles, lets the smile spread into a grin. “This is going to be a good year, you’ll see.”

She looks like she wants to believe him. “It’s going to be a hard year.”

“Well, of course,” he says. He’s still grinning as he turns attention forward, towards the open road. “Who wants a gold medal that comes easy?”

 

 _Juliet says, Hey, it's Romeo! You nearly gave me a heart attack_  
_He's underneath the window, she's singing, Hey, la, my boyfriend's back_  
_You shouldn't come around here singing up at people like that_  
_Anyway, what you gonna do about it?_  

 

“You’re hanging out with David?” Scott asks, eyebrows curled in incredulity.

He pronounces “hanging out” as if it’s a foreign concept, as if what “hanging out” means to 35-year-old David can’t possibly mean what it does to 19-year-old Tessa.

“Yeah,” says Tessa breezily. “He’s picking me up in a few minutes.” She settles onto the curb outside the rink, trying not to feel like a child waiting for her parents after school.

Scott continues to stare at her while gnawing on his water bottle.

“It’s just David!” she says. Her tone is meant to convey harmlessness: it’s just David, their skating mentor; it’s just David, friendly Canton fixture; it’s just David, who’s known them both forever.

Of course, the whole point of “hanging out” with David is that it’s not “just David” anymore. The whole point is that it’s different now, that he doesn’t look at her the way he did when she was a gawky kid. Now he looks at her like she’s something he wants, like she’s wantable. David Pelletier, national hero, Skate Canada hall of famer, Olympic gold medalist, one half of the duo who beat Didier, upended the system, and got justice for both Canada and figure skating at large. David Pelletier looks at her, wants her, and it feels good.

Or at least it feels a hell of a lot better than the way everybody else looks at her. With skepticism ( _should she be back already?_ ), with disbelief ( _right, Bambi on ice thinks she’ll be at the Olympics next year_ ), with contempt ( _can’t believe Scott didn’t trade her in when he had the chance_ ). It feels a lot better than the way Scott looks at her, guilty and apologetic and just barely angry at her for not having forgiven him already.

He probably hasn’t even admitted it to himself, probably thinks he’s doing the work of earning back her trust with his “I’m so proud of you”s and the solicitous pats on the knee in the Kiss & Cry, but Tessa knows part of him believes that the burden of fixing things falls on her, the way it always does. Scott’s the one who abandoned her after her surgery, who went two months without so much as checking in, but somehow it’s Tessa’s job to make it okay.

She’s tired of this stupid job, which is why she looks out over the parking lot for David’s car instead of meeting Scott’s eyes. She doesn’t need to look at him; she can feel the disapproval he thinks is protectiveness settling over her like a fine layer of dust. There’s a scrim of distance between them all the time now, like looking at each other through a pane of scratched hockey glass, like dancing with invisible gloves.

Scott doesn’t approve, but what’s he going to do about it? She doesn’t need his approval, for David or for anybody else. She already knows that Fedor has been a bad idea, that sneaking around with your coach’s son doesn’t lead anywhere good, especially when your coach spent your entire surgical recovery trying to replace you.

Marina probably already knows anyway, and it probably didn’t have anything to do with why she kept trying to set Scott up with different practice partners who weren’t really just for practice, girls with more skating talent and more money, girls whose families promised to cover training expenses and living expenses and one of his parents’ mortgages if only Scott would do the smart thing and at least line up a replacement for the Olympics, instead of waiting around for Tessa, who might not make it back at all. The truth is that Marina is probably too Machiavellian to let Fedor’s antics affect her coaching. She just doesn’t want Scott wasted on Tessa.

Tessa’s supposed to be grateful that he didn’t go along with her plan, that he threw a tantrum and trained with sandbags and hockey sticks rather than continue skate-cheating on her with other girls. She’s supposed to be understanding of the position he was in, to get that the guilt over it was the reason he didn’t reach out to her while she was in pain, in surgery, on bedrest, on crutches. She’s supposed to be happy that he stuck with her. Is stuck with her.

She’s supposed to have forgiven him by now. But she’s tired of this stupid job. Tired of being the good one, the careful one. When Scott punched Bryce in the face last year after yet another fight over Jess, he barely got a talking-to. When he got arrested for underage drinking, even his parents laughed it off and reminded him that the legal age is twenty-one in the States. Tessa remembers the interview where Scott called her his younger, more mature sister, and it makes her furious. He should be the grownup for once, actually do something instead of looking concerned and useless, should leave her alone with her bad ideas.

Whatever’s happening with David will probably be a bad idea too. But his car is pulling into the parking lot and Tessa hops off the curb to meet it.

“Have a good weekend,” Scott calls after her half-heartedly.

“You too,” she says without turning around, and then she’s securely in David’s car, tossing her bag into the back, next to the carseat. Even with the door shut, she can feel Scott on the other side of the window, but she looks at David instead.

“Hey babe,” he says, leaning over to kiss her on the cheek. He puts the car back in drive and starts to maneuver out of the parking lot. Tessa sees his eyes flick to the rearview mirror, to Scott, still standing on the curb. “Everything okay?”

“Of course,” says Tessa. She doesn’t care if she’s convincing, but when David hmms at this, she thinks it’s less because he’s so good at reading her and more because he’s as familiar with rink gossip as anyone else.

“You know,” he says, his voice slipping back into that old mentorship tone, “it’s not a great look. This tension between the two of you.”

Tessa makes some kind of noncommittal noise.

“Maybe you guys should go out to lunch or something. You know, be seen together more. Like you’re getting along.” He glances past Tessa to look down the street and turns right. “You can’t give the judges a reason to doubt that you’re a team.”

Tessa’s noncommittal noise turns into a scoff.

David picks her hand up off her thigh, wraps it in his. “Hey,” he says, and now the mentor thing is gone, he sounds like hanging-out David again. “I know what it’s like. It sucks, but that’s the game. Otherwise Jamie and I would be divorced by now. But that’s how it is sometimes.” They stop at a light and he turns to look at her, moving his hand to her jaw, thumbing her lip. “You gotta get through it so you can get the things you really want.”

Tessa should probably be annoyed that he’s mentioning his wife in one breath and coming on to her in the next, but she’s not. It makes her feel powerful, like she’s on the same level as Jamie, maybe even a step above. And it’s not like they’re doing anything wrong. David’s marriage is basically over anyway; anybody who matters knows that. And the people who don’t, well, they still need to believe in the fairy tale of Salé and Pelletier, at least through the next tour season.

And people need to believe in the fairy tale of Virtue and Moir too, she guesses. Nobody’s ever won ice dance gold in their Olympic debut before, so they need to make that work for them, play up the sweetheart-ingenue thing. It needs to be done, so Tessa will do it, suck it up and go to lunch and get over her issues with Scott. If he can get over himself.

“Fine,” says Tessa. “But I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

“No problem, babe,” says David. He smirks. “I can think of other things we can do.” The light turns green and he turns back to the road.

Tessa does get why Scott thinks it’s weird, even creepy. She’s not an idiot. What Scott doesn’t get is that those same reasons are what she likes about it. It’s flattering to be wanted by someone who shouldn’t want her, like it must mean that he wants her so much. It’s nice to let someone else take the reins for once. It feels good, and what’s so wrong with wanting to feel good? Tessa is so tired of feeling bad.

 

 _Juliet, the dice was loaded from the start_  
_And I bet, and you exploded into my heart_  
_And I forget, I forget the movie song_  
_When you gonna realize it was just that the time was wrong, Juliet?_

 

Scott remembers the first time he realized just how inextricably entwined his life would always be with Tessa’s.

It wasn’t when he first learned that she had turned down the National Ballet School to keep skating with him. He was only eleven then, had no idea what kind of sacrifice that was, and he’s not sure she did either. It wasn’t when training moved them to a new town at thirteen and fifteen, or to a new country at fifteen and seventeen; by then, those kind of sacrifices seemed normal, the kind of thing everybody they knew was doing. He knows that to people outside the world of elite athletics, those decisions look like a lot, but for him, they were nothing compared to the decision to sacrifice each other.

Scott generally tries not to hear the stories that circulate about him and Tessa, but he knows that people think that they hooked up after winning the Vancouver Games in a whirlwind of celebration, or at some post-competition banquet when they were both drunk, or during Carmen for obvious reasons, or all of the above and more. The truth is that they only slept together once, and there were no special circumstances, nothing setting it apart except the event itself. Just a normal night after practice, hanging out on Scott’s bed and watching movie on his laptop. He can’t remember which movie, but it probably wasn’t even particularly sexy.

What he does remember is glancing down at Tessa, nestled against him, and how her lips were suddenly _right there_ , with nothing between them and his except a sudden static that had materialized in the air. And then there wasn’t even that, because they were kissing.

He doesn’t remember the details of the sex, although he wishes he could as often as he’s grateful he can’t. He remembers clothes being in the way and then not being in the way anymore. He remembers the colliding senses of newness and familiarity, and he remembers feeling so, so good. But when he tries to conjure the details of Tessa’s body or how she tasted or what noises she made, he finds them frustratingly obscured by blurry emotion, the intensity of finally getting something he hadn’t realized he’d been waiting for.

And he remembers, with eidetic clarity, the part that came afterwards, when they were both still naked and sweaty but suddenly chilled by the enormity of what they’d done. He could feel the moment it hit Tessa because it was the same moment that it hit him, and very few spoken words were necessary to assure each other that they both understood why this couldn’t happen again, why the risk they’d taken in betting their futures on each other couldn’t be made riskier.

So the concept of being together was added to the list of sacrifices they had made and would continue to make to pursue their dream, another link in the chain that joins them together while holding them apart, a chain that can sometimes feel like a yoke but also like a lifeline. The chain is twisted around them and also around skating, and in cold moments Scott wonders what would happen if it suddenly dissolved, if they’d stay close or if their lives would take off from each other in different directions like unleashed dogs. He wonders if he’ll ever find out, and sometimes he hopes he never does.

As long as the chain is in place, as long as they skate together, Scott doesn’t get to know how he feels about Tessa. He doesn’t have the luxury of figuring out that they’re just friends, or more than friends, or that he’s in love with her. They’re skating partners first and last, and dealing with anything else means setting that partnership aside, which is as impossible as setting each other aside.

Scott remembers Tessa still in his arms as they came to the agreement that would keep her out of his reach. He remembers thinking that this was the way it had to be from the start, and he wishes he could forget.


	2. Chapter 2

_Come up on different streets_  
_They both were streets of shame_  
_Both dirty, both mean, yes_  
_And the dream was just the same_

 

“I thought you liked Cassandra,” says Scott. He chews his gum stubbornly and shifts on the couch, getting his shoes on Tessa’s cushions.

“I do!” she says, and she’s not even exactly lying. Tessa does like Cassandra, the same way she likes convenience stores, or elevator music, or anything else she doesn’t have actively negative feelings about. “All I’m saying is that Charlie’s got Tanith stashed away, and they’ve been together for three years.”

Of course, it’s probably easier for Charlie—Tanith knows the deal, after all. Scott will have to explain to Cassandra about the dirtiness of figure skating, the meanness that you only see once you’ve scrubbed away the sequins. How the story that happens on the ice can’t clash with whatever’s happening off the ice, how even though audiences and judges might know intellectually that the story isn’t true, you can’t go around rubbing that knowledge in their faces.

In her more cynical moments, Tessa sometimes thinks that skating basically turns them all into girlfriend experience-style prostitutes. She supposes this isn’t an issue for, say, lugers. It’s part of the job, though, and they’re only playing it up, not making it up—she and Scott care about each other just as much as they say in the interviews. After all the work they’ve put into their relationship, it would be stupid not to take advantage of it. And yeah, it’s selling a part of themselves, but what job isn’t? Still, comparing their sport to sex work is definitely not the way to get Scott on board.

“Kaitlyn and Andrew are friggin living together while dating other people,” Tessa says instead. “And Meryl’s hiding Fedor,” she adds, trying not to think about that too much.

“So?”

“So I don’t know that you parading Cassandra all over this reality show is the way to go.”

“Documentary,” insists Scott, as if calling it that will make it so.

Tessa rolls her eyes. “Please,” she says. “With those weird dinner setups and the questions they’re asking in the talking heads? We both know which way the editing is going.”

Actually, Tessa likes the film crew. The editorial direction isn’t their fault, and it’s almost like having friends at the rink, where it’s been getting chillier the closer it gets to the Olympics. But it’s not like she has to remind herself to keep her guard up; her guard is always up. They’d love to get her and Scott discussing his girlfriend on camera, which is why she picked a non-filming day to insist he come over to hash this out.

Scott has furrowed his brow mutinously. “Cassandra’s already in the footage.”

“So break up with her,” Tessa says. Scott’s eyebrows go up. “Not for real, obviously. Just tell them that you broke up, you can keep doing whatever on the side, as long as you keep it quiet.”

Scott doesn’t say anything, but she can feel what he’s thinking: _Because that always works out so well_. Her face doesn’t have time to redden before he shoots her a look of apology.

Tessa decides to let it go. She’s not interested in getting derailed by any mention of David, spoken or otherwise. “We can’t have her fucking up the narrative, is all.”

She can see Scott toying with the idea of feigning confusion and gives him a look telling him not to bother. She knows he knows what she means, and worse, she knows he knows that she’s right. She’s not even mad at him, just resentful of the ease with which he can pretend to himself that all that matters is the skate.

It comes from being a prodigy, probably, a generational talent that nobody wants to fuck up. And from being a boy, secure in the knowledge that nobody’s going to call him a slut or a homewrecker. And maybe it’s as simple as being a natural extrovert to whom nobody seems to be able to say no. It never seems to occur to him that someone could say no to him, that there might exist someone who doesn’t have his best interests at heart.

It’s not that she wishes that he’d had to learn the hard way like she did, enduring the endless criticism and the Russian muttering and the weekly weigh-ins and the potentially career-ending surgeries and the dressing room sniping and the rumors rumors rumors. Except she kind of does, wishes that he had some context to understand why Tessa’s always worried about this stuff. Why she’s always pushing the off-ice story, why she talked Scott into that bizarre wedding shoot, why she’s the one who had to tell David that Skate Canada didn’t think it was good idea for him to do the introduction for their book anymore. Why she keeps bringing up the Marina thing, long after there’s anything to be done about it. She has to be the one who worries, since clearly he won’t.

And when she worries enough, he eventually gets it in the end. Hence doing The Hug in view of the mixed zone instead of backstage, hence the fluff pieces where they’re basically in each other’s laps, hence the whole dumb show in the first place.

“It’s for the gold,” she says finally, and when Scott flicks his eyes to hers, she can tell that he’s trying to gauge whether she’s wasting a trump card. She hopes she isn’t.

They’ve given interviews about the keywords and phrases they use to focus themselves and each other, but they never talk about the most important one, the first one, the original one. “For the gold” sounds too mercenary, too un-Canadian. If this nightmare of a show has taught her anything, it’s that people want them to be sweetness and softness, not cutthroat competitors. Why do people think they do it? Tessa wonders. Why wake up at five am, why skate until your shinbones feel like knives against your calf muscles, why grimace through sweaty and insipid press conferences, why get cut open not once, but twice, if not _for the gold_?

“Look, we’ll figure it out,” says Scott. He lifts his chin and twists his mouth the way he does when he’s about to say something he thinks will be funny. “How about this,” he poses. “How about I keep dating Cassandra . . . but then the story is that you’re, like, pining after me?” He spreads his hands, innocence itself. “I get my cake and you can eat it too?”

Tessa presses her lips together, genuinely exasperated, but can’t trap the smile that sneaks past them. Scott’s face breaks open, and then they’re both laughing and she’s shaking her head.

It definitely comes from being a boy.

 

 _And I dreamed your dream for you_  
_And now your dream is real_  
_How can you look at me as if I was just another one of your deals?_

 

“. . . have become the youngest ever Olympic champions in ice dance . . .”

“. . . marks the first time a North American duo has won Olympic gold in the event, breaking Europe’s 34-year streak . . .”

“. . . the only pair to date to ever take gold in their Olympic debut . . .”

“. . . now the first ice dance team to ever win on home ice . . .”

The media is insane. Everybody told them it would be a circus, but being told wasn’t enough to prepare them for the crush of reporters, for cameras and microphones in every direction. Even outside the arena, everything is chaos: strangers in red and white asking for pictures, Canada-jacketed athletes they haven’t gotten a chance to meet shouting congratulations, persistent new media journalists dogging them right up to the steps of the dorms. Scott can’t help but appreciate having their own refuge in the Village, even though the circumstances of Tessa having a room to herself suck.

He can’t think about that now, not with this medal around his neck. The feeling—he wasn’t prepared for that either. It’s heavier than he expected, supposedly the heaviest medal in Olympic history. The heaviness is counterbalanced by the electricity that hasn’t stopped coursing through his body since the scores came up on the screen. He keeps expecting it to run out. The crash, whenever it comes, will probably be huge.

But for now he’s still amped up, fairly bouncing into the room after Tessa. The last CTV interview didn’t wrap up until after midnight, and they haven’t really had a moment alone since before skating. They face each other now, beaming like idiots.

“Gold,” says Tessa.

“Gold,” says Scott.

They stare at each other for a beat, and then simultaneously burst into a flurry of overlapping chatter.

“I thought when we ended the wrong way—”

“I know, I was trying to be cool about it but then—”

“And when you got so close to the boards—”

“I felt them brush my skate! And that bobble at the beginning—”

“But the new dismount worked—”

“And that second footwork sequence—”

“After that practice last week, I wasn’t sure—”

“But we did it.”

“We did it.”

Scott flops back onto Tessa’s bed. She crawls up to sit next to his head. “I can’t believe you hugged Marina before me,” she says, yanking his hair lightly.

“I was in the moment!”

“You were trying to look cool, jumping up like that.”

“You mean succeeding.” He reaches up to pull her into a headlock. She squeals and pushes him off.

Scott sits up and grabs her face again, more gently this time. “Seriously, T,” he says. “Thank you.”

Tessa’s eyes are still dancing. “Thank _you_.”

He shakes his head. “No, I mean _thank you_. I know it hurt.” He nods at her shins. “And this last year has been really rough. After the surgery . . .” Scott pauses. They’ve discussed it endlessly in therapy, but it’s still hard to talk about it in real life. “Thanks for going through all that.”

Tessa toys with the Hudson’s Bay patch on the hem of her hoodie. “You don’t have to . . .” Her eyes flick back up to his, a little misty. “It was for the gold, right?”

Scott nods, although it’s also true that it was never _just_ for the gold. Fuck, if she ends up crying, he definitely will.

“And now we have the gold.” She grins. “So it was all worth it.”

He grins back. “Dreams come true, kiddo.”

“You’re such a dork,” she says, rolling her eyes. She gets up and unzips the hoodie. “Speaking of which, time to get out of this ridiculous team gear.” She rummages through her drawers for some street clothes.

“Hey,” says Scott, leaning back on his elbows. “I like the team gear.”

“That reminds me,” Tessa calls over her shoulder as she heads into the bathroom. “Roots has an endorsement deal we’re supposed to look at when we get a chance.”

He groans theatrically. “Not now. Tonight’s supposed to be about celebrating.” There’s a mirror facing the open bathroom door and he can see Tessa pulling off her Canada shirt. He forces himself to look away, rolls off the bed and peers out the window. It’s still madness down below. “What are our celebration plans anyway?”

“What, Scott Moir hasn’t been planning this party since before Torino?”

He has indeed, although the plans have changed dramatically over the years, more so in the last few days as he’s adjusted to what the Olympics are actually like. “Well, Canada House, obviously. And then maybe a kind of bar crawl, going from house to house? As long as we don't end up blowing our whole medal bonus on covers. We can collect pins.” He starts ticking off fingers. “Chiddy is in, some of the sliders and snowboarders are in. I asked Sid Crosby, just in case, but he said no late nights until after the gold medal game, cocky bastard. Charlie and Danny, of course. Jess, but hopefully just her and no Bryce.”

He frowns a little at that last bit. Jess has been a little weird all day. Not suspicious weird—for once he doesn’t think it has anything to do with Bryce—but not as . . . effusive as he’d expected. He doesn’t know if her mind is still on her own sixth place finish (although it would have been pretty surprising if she and Bryce had done any better than that), or if it’s still this obsession with going “Facebook official,” whatever that means. He’s pretty sure they already put that to bed when he told her he’d think about it once the Games were over and Tessa wasn’t so worried about how things looked, but he doesn’t know how else to account for her sourness.

Tessa emerges from the bathroom, interrupting a train of thought from which he’s glad to disembark. “Sounds like a fun night,” she says, throwing her Canada gear into the drawer she’s using as a hamper. “Get some good pins for me.”

Scott whips his head around. “Wait, are you not coming?”

She’s still moving around the room, tidying up things that don’t need tidying, avoiding his eyes. “I’m meeting up with David,” she says, flushing a little. “It’s the only night we can both get outside the city.” _Because we can’t be seen together in Vancouver with all this press around_ , she doesn’t say.

Scott feels strangely bereft. “You’re seriously skipping out on this?” he says. He doesn’t like the forlorn note he hears in his voice. “We did this together.”

“It’s not like I could stay out late anyway. I’ve got physio starting at nine am.” She’s run out of things to put away, faces him and shrugs. “Unless you want me to keep using you as a crutch for the rest of the week.”

He’s suddenly unsure who’s abandoning whom.

“We-ell,” he says. “As long as you’re celebrating somehow.”

It feels wrong to be going their separate ways after today. The wrongness sits between them, and Scott finds himself looking at it instead of Tessa. It’s not quite the crash he was expecting, but the lights that the electricity has been powering have faded a little.

“I’ll see you tomorrow though,” she says. “For Joannie’s short?”

At the mention of Joannie, they both automatically slide their eyes to her side of the room, conspicuously blank. It feels petty to complain about anything next to that empty bed.

“She doesn’t want any distractions beforehand,” says Tessa, “so meet you at the PNE at eight? She starts 26th, should give us plenty of time.”

“Sounds good,” Scott says. “I better go find Jess.” He holds up his phone, the burner he’s using for the duration of the Games. “If you change your mind.” She nods and he turns to leave.

“Oh, before you go!” she says. He looks back, hand on the doorknob. “Sid’s gold medal game—you got the tickets for it, right?”

“What?” Replacement hockey tickets are impossible, even for medalists. “No, you got them. Tell me you got them.”

Tessa’s eyes are wide with alarm. Then her face collapses into a smirk. “That’s for telling me we came in second.”

“Oh, _I’m_ the dork,” he says, wrestling her into a hug.

 

 _When you can fall for chains of silver_  
_You can fall for chains of gold_  
_You can fall for pretty strangers_  
_And the promises they hold_

  

Tessa doesn’t know when she last did anything that wasn’t for the gold. She’s let Skate Canada dictate her personal life, she’s relearned every single one of her leg muscles, she’s broken up her parents’ marriage, probably. Now she sits in her childhood bedroom, holding her silver medal in her hands and wondering how to justify the last four years of her life.

She realizes, dimly, that there’s a world in which being the second best ice dance team on the planet is not some massive failure, that that world is a hell of a lot bigger than hers. But it’s never been _for the silver_ or _for the podium_ , or for whatever other reason people do things. The phrase “it doesn’t matter if you win or lose as long as you have fun” pops into her head, and she can barely contemplate what it must be like to be the sort of person who believes that crap.

She hasn’t talked to Scott in four days. It’s weird because that’s the longest they’ve gone without talking in years, and it’s even weirder that that’s the case. There’s a conversation coming and she’s not looking forward to it. She doesn’t know how it’s going to go, which is as weird a feeling as the not talking.

They’ve already decided to skip Worlds. It’s not like in 2010, when they still needed that title, and honestly, Tessa doesn’t think she’d be able to drag herself through _Seasons_ again. What they haven’t discussed, at least out loud, is what’s happening after that. Sochi was their last Olympics, obviously, and if they’re not going to do a full quad, why compete at all?

And yet Tessa can’t seem to wrap her mouth around the word “retirement,” let alone her mind. It’s not just about giving up skating, because it’s never just about skating. It’s about severing the partnership, unlocking the shackles that bind her and Scott together. She can feel the chains dragging them down, drowning them, and while part of her knows that the only way either of them can survive is to swim free of each other, another part is more afraid of reaching the surface alone.

So she doesn’t pick up the phone and Scott doesn’t pick up the phone and they don’t see each other until they’re back on the interview circuit, talking about how grateful they are to Canadians for supporting them even though they didn’t bring home gold like they were supposed to. Trying to downplay Marina’s favoritism and rumored US-Russian collusion and inexplicable point gaps. Nobody asks them directly about Petri Kokko’s tweet, and they’re able to keep repeating that they’re proud of their skates, but every time they do, Tessa thinks Scott looks a little deader behind the eyes. They keep sidestepping the retirement question, but she knows they can’t put it off for much longer. As much as she wants to avoid it, it’s crippling to be around Scott like this, talking to the interviewers but not to each other.

When their last media day is finally over and he suggests they grab a drink, she knows it’s time. Tessa is done with being in public for the day, so they hit Scott’s hotel room’s minibar instead. He cracks open a Molson and Tessa fashions herself something out of a tiny bottle of vodka and a sparkling water. They sit with their drinks on the bed, not looking at each other, miles of space between them.

“I’m so tired,” Scott says finally.

Tessa nods.

“Not just from today,” he says, glancing up at her. As if there was any possibility that she didn’t know what he meant.

Tessa nods again.

“We had two good skates,” he says. He’s been saying that all day. “Great skates. I don’t care what the judges said, I know how that Finnstep felt.”

“It wasn’t enough.”

“It should have been enough.”

“That’s the problem, though,” says Tessa. “Isn’t it?” She tosses back the rest of her drink, tops off the vodka. “We worked so hard, just us against the world, and the world won.”

Scott smiles wryly. “Well, us and Patch and Babsy.” The smile fades. “But yeah.”

Tessa is watching the ice melt in her glass. “I’m tired too.” She gives the misshapen cubes a swirl. “I’m tired of it being just us against the world.”

“Marina should have been there. I should have listened to you.”

Tessa’s not in the mood for “I told you so”s, but she can’t help feel a little vindicated. There was a part of her that wondered if she was making a big deal out of nothing, and so it’s a bit of a relief to know that she wasn’t paranoid, to have the last of her illusions about fairness and purity wiped away.

But it’s not just that. She can feel Scott waiting for what she has to say.

“I think . . .” she starts. Tessa looks at him, locking his eyes on her own. She needs him to understand what she means. “I think I’m tired of it being us.”

She’s not sure if she was more afraid that he would look rejected or relieved, but somehow the expression on his face is both.

“It’s not that I want to skate with anybody else,” she elaborates, unnecessarily. “I just think . . . I need a break. We both do.” She takes a hurried gulp of her watery vodka. “I think it would be good for us to figure some stuff out. Independently.”

“Unhook the chain,” Scott says softly.

Tessa didn’t know he thought about it that way too.

“It doesn’t have to be actual retirement,” she says. “We can take it one year at a time.”

Scott is staring at nothing over her shoulder. “Chiddy’s taking next year off too. I told him I thought it’d be good for him. Healthy.”

Tessa can feel him drifting away from her already. “It’s not like we wouldn’t still be partners. There’s still tour. And choreographing for tour. And the Golf Classic. And puck drops and galas and seminars and whatever else they want us to do.”

Scott’s lips turn up at the corners, but he’s still not meeting her eyes. “I thought the point was getting away from what they want us to do,” and Tessa knows he’s not just talking about sponsors and Skate Canada. It’s the damn story, the Tessa-and-Scott-ness of it all.

“Scott,” she says, and waits until he looks at her. “You’re my best friend.”

His eyes soften and his smile turns genuine. Small, but genuine. “You too, T.”

He leans over to hug her, and they stay like that for a long time. When Scott pulls away at last, his eyes are red. Between the two of them, he’s always been the crier, but Tessa almost feels like joining him.

She pours more vodka in her glass instead, and they both drink until they can laugh, and then drink more until they can toast to a year off, and then more until they fall asleep on top of the covers in their clothes. In the morning, Tessa’s tongue and head feel like hell, but the rest of her is starting to feel like it might be okay to be alone.

Of course, “alone” doesn’t really mean alone; it just means without each other. Within a few months, Scott is dating Kaitlyn and Tessa is back with Ryan, and it’s like they’re separate people.


	3. Chapter 3

_You promised me everything_  
_You promised me thick and thin, yeah_  
_Now you just say, Oh, Romeo, yeah_  
_You know I used to have a scene with him_

 

The thing is, they actually see each other all the time. There’s Stars on Ice Japan and Stars on Ice Canada and Artistry on Ice China/Taipei and Art on Ice Switzerland and Holidays on Ice and just a ton of stuff on ice. And plenty of stuff off ice too—Tessa was right about the puck drops and the galas, even a fairly embarrassing first pitch at a Blue Jays game where Scott pretends he doesn’t usually wear a Tigers hat. They see each other at Jeff’s wedding, grab dinner when they’re both in London. Tessa walks him through setting up a Twitter account, promising that it won’t be the same fiasco as Facebook ended up being. Scott offers to caddy for Tessa at some golf fundraiser, even coordinates outfits at her request.

So it’s not all day every day, but it is pretty much all the time, at least the way most people use the phrase. It’s not Scott’s fault that his baseline for “all the time” has been fucked up for the last two thirds of his life.

He’s got plenty of other stuff to keep himself busy: flights out to Winnipeg to see Kaitlyn and watch her compete, working on home renovations, dropping by the Ilderton rink to help out Aunt Carol. He’s still a morning person, but it’s nice to sleep in until eight am. It’s a relief, really, to wake up and think about pancakes instead of step sequences. He’s tracking Leafs stats instead of ISU standings, musing over whether Danny’s free for a beer later instead of what Marina will get on his case about today. It’s a relief to have only his own thoughts in his head.

Still, whenever Tessa asks him if he misses competition, which one of them always ends up doing, the answer is yes. Whenever he asks her, the answer is the same.

The 2015 preseason gets underway and neither of them suggests returning.

It’s summer and they’re in Scotland for Gold Medal Plates. Scott gets a kick out of painting his face and wearing a kilt, and he’s brought Kaitlyn, who loves the castle. She also likes Tessa, which is a nice change. Tessa handles the bulk of the spokesperson duties, but both of them have to keep correcting people about not technically being retired. All the same, Scott sometimes catches himself referring to their career in the past tense, and when he overhears Tessa describing him to an inquiring donor as someone she used to skate with, the Gaelic clouds are suddenly heavier in the sky.

When Tessa and Kaitlyn decide to take a dip in the North Sea with Miku and a few of the other girls, Scott stays on the beach, dutifully taking their Instagram pictures but mostly staring out at the turbulent horizon.

He’s not checking Tessa out, obviously, not with his girlfriend right there, but he does notice that she looks the same in her swimsuit as she does in her skating dresses, which is to say, amazing. Scott doesn’t know how she does it. His body isn’t responding to non-retirement nearly as well; he’s pretty sure he’s gained about five pounds in the face alone. For the first time, he wonders if going back to competition is even an option, if he could physically whip himself into shape.

“Hey,” says Tessa, crouching down next to him. She’s wrapped in a big terrycloth bathrobe, and Scott doesn’t get how she’s not freezing. “You okay?”

“Of course,” he says. He smiles.

As expected, she doesn’t believe him, but she also doesn’t pursue it. She follows his gaze out over the water. “So I was thinking,” she says. “That cover of ‘What’s Love Got to Do with It’ that Miku and Michael did the other night. We should do an ex to it, right?”

“Definitely.” Scott had the same idea when he heard it, but he has that idea whenever he hears music nowadays. He suddenly thinks that he’ll never say no to another dance with Tessa. He might even be willing to do _Pride and Prejudice_ at this point. “Do you miss it?” he asks.

“Yes,” she says. He looks away from the water to take in her profile, but then she smiles at him, the same kind of smile he just gave her. Is this what his life is now? Him looking forward to exhibition skates and Tessa not knowing what’s wrong?

Kaitlyn comes bounding up, swaddled in a matching robe. “Three storm petrels and one litre of gas!” she says to Tessa, squeezing in next to him. The girls laugh at whatever this inside joke is, and Scott tries to join in, wishing he felt half as warm as them.

He feels better once they’re back home and he’s back in skates. His footing feels more sure when he’s balancing on one blade carving into the slick ice, even when he catches his toe pick and wipes out in front of the thirty kids he and Tessa are leading in a master class. They do four more classes, and then they’re on a plane to Beijing for Passion of Ice and Snow.

Scott calculates the time difference as soon as they board and forces himself to sleep as much as he can through the Chinese night, leaning into his jacket balled up against the window. The sun peeks around the shade and Tessa fusses next to him, working on some Hillberg and Berk thing. She’s so busy, has been calling the last year her “year of yes.” It’s strange to not know whether it’s a year or if it’s the rest of her life.

The show is fun, shows in Asia always are. Javi is there, and Eric and Meagan, and Alex bops through all their practices with a camera, eventually putting together a goofy video. It’s nothing like competition at all.

They have a few days after the show ends and Beijing has won their Olympic bid, so he and Tessa take a side trip to the Great Wall. It’s raining but neither of them particularly care. They hike a mile or so without really talking about anything at all, and it’s startling how much bigger the silence between them is.

As they crest towards a signal tower, Tessa pauses to take in the wall snaking forward through the hills. “Do you miss it?” she asks without prelude.

He leans against the stone next to her. “Yes.”

She nods, still looking into the mist. “Me too.”

Scott watches her until she turns to look at him. “So let’s go back,” he says, and when her face changes, it’s like he’s seeing her for the first time in months.

After that, the pieces fall into place so easily that it’s hard to imagine the puzzle forming any other image. A two-year plan, to remind themselves how to compete before they head into the Olympic season. Training at Gadbois, obviously—they’ll ask Marie-France and Patch to help them with “What’s Love,” treat that like a coaching test run. Tessa will get back in touch with B2Ten, thinks that she can get them to take them both on this time around. They’re already scheduled to commentate Worlds in Boston, which will give them the opportunity to scout the field in more detail, see if there’s anybody to worry about other than the obvious candidates. If all goes well, they’ll announce on February 20th, two years to the day before the Pyeongchang free dance. The date feels lucky: counting from their first competition instead of their first practice, they’ll hit their 20th anniversary right as the Olympic year begins. They can lean into that narrative, brand everything with a big “XX.”

It’s not that Scott boards his flight home a different person than the one who landed in China a week ago, but he does feel more complete. It’s like he’s had a sense restored, or an arm. He’s more himself, more something. Maybe just more.

 

 _Juliet, when we made love, you used to cry_  
_You said, I love you like the stars above, I'll love you till I die_  
_There's a place for us, you know the movie song_  
_When you gonna realize it was just that the time was wrong, Juliet?_

 

People have been telling her how special her relationship with Scott is for as long as Scott has been in her life, which is to say, as long as she can remember. But that’s the kind of thing people  _say._ For a long time, it didn’t occur to her that it really was that special, or unusual, or intense, or whatever word people like to use. It took a while for Tessa to realize that yes, their relationship is that weird, and that she and Scott are uniquely incapable of seeing the weirdness for themselves.

They try to describe it in their therapy sessions, the ones with the so-called marriage counselors, only half of whom actually specialize in couples. Tessa’s always been good at remembering exact phrases from conversations—all the better to replay criticism in her head as she tries to fall asleep—and the talent comes in handy for repeating the explanations whenever they have to break in a new therapist. The counselors tend to know a lot about relationships and sports psychology but nothing at all about their world, so she and Scott usually resort to _Dirty Dancing_ references about dance spaces and spaghetti arms, metaphors about pictures and frames, flowers and stems.

Tessa remembers one session, looking at Scott on the opposite end of the couch, trying to shortcut another argument about how if she were a better flower, he wouldn’t have to be as strong a stem, about how they both know the effort he has to put in to transfer some of his natural magnetism to her, and how if he would just _admit it_ already—

“I wonder if the two of you realize how often you do that,” the therapist interrupted. “These silent conversations.”

It was strange and a little embarrassing to be caught out like that, as if she and Scott had been whispering about someone only to find them suddenly within earshot. She tried to explain it away, talking about how they’d been together for so long that they knew what the other was going to say, but when the therapist said, “You mean, what you _think_ the other one is going to say,” that stuck with her a little bit.

An awkwardness had settled over the room. “She thinks it’s her fault we had a bad practice week,” Scott eventually said.

“It was,” said Tessa.

Scott shook his head. “Marina wants ‘more feel’ from me, and that’s never Tessa’s problem,” he told the therapist. Tessa couldn’t help noticing that the cost of him using his words was that he was no longer addressing her directly. “She’s the one who can actually dance.”

“If I could find the entrance to the rotational lift faster, he wouldn’t be so distracted,” Tessa explained. “If he had a stronger partner—”

“No,” Scott cut her off. “I could never have another partner.”

His kindness could be so frustrating.

“What about the chemistry?” the therapist asked. “You’ve talked about the importance of connection in the performances. Doesn’t all your time together count for something? Or do you think either of you could create that with someone else?”

“Scott could,” said Tessa, before he could respond. “Dance chemistry is really all about the man looking at the woman. He’s really good at looking.”

The image of Scott skating with some faceless other popped into her head, and she suddenly found herself breathless.

“No,” Scott said impatiently. “Even if that were true, I couldn’t look at anybody else the way I look at her. I couldn’t do this with another partner. Not, I couldn’t do it as well. I couldn’t do it at all.”

“Because . . . you’re attracted to her?” the therapist asked, hesitant but slightly smug, as if revealing a great but terrible truth.

“Of course I’m attracted to her,” Scott snapped, like it was some kind of axiom. “I’m attracted to my girlfriend too, but I couldn’t dance with her, even if she had actual skating skills.”

And Tessa remembers realizing that that was true, that she had seen Scott look at all of his girlfriends and it was different than the way he looked at her, both on and off the ice. She remembers sudden tears pricking her eyes, quickly blinked away. She remembers not knowing what to make of that.

The therapist didn’t seem to either. When Tessa asked if these kinds of arguments were normal in sports partnerships, she made noises about not liking the word “normal” before conceding that it wasn’t common. All that meant was that Tessa mentally substituted the word “normal” for “common” whenever the therapist used it, which also meant changing “uncommon” to “abnormal.”

But how were she and Scott ever supposed to be normal? Normal people don’t spend eight to fifteen hours a day together, six days a week, sweating and suffering. Normal people don’t dedicate their lives to performing elaborate trust falls at 100 rpm with knives strapped to their feet. Normal people don’t imprint on each other at ages seven and nine like goslings, and so none of the normal boundaries and strategies that the therapists propose are ever going to fully apply.

Trying to explain their relationship to other people is always going to be like trying to explain the sense of smell to a race of asnosmiacs. Trying to explain it to themselves is explaining water to fish. But if she and Scott are the exact wrong people to understand how different they look from the outside, doesn’t that make them the only experts on what it’s like to be on the inside?

They take what they can from the therapy, try to verbalize more and make fewer assumptions and acknowledge how sensitive they are to each other’s moods, but in the end, it’s going to be up to them to forge a path through the wilderness of their relationship. They can only carve out one step forward at a time, and Tessa can only hope that they’re moving towards a place that that will wait for them.


	4. Chapter 4

_I can't do the talk like they talk on the TV_  
_And I can't do a love song the way it's meant to be_  
_I can't do everything but I'd do anything for you_  
_I can't do anything except be in love with you_

 

“It’s been used a lot,” Marie-France said uncertainly.

But he and Tessa stood firm. “We’d make it our own.”

Despite her skepticism, Marie-France went along with them, and eventually she agreed. _Moulin Rouge_ is the most ambitious program they’ve ever skated. It’s an Olympic program. They love it, audiences are loving it, and judges should be loving it. Whatever’s been going on this weekend, it has nothing to do with the music choice.

Grand Prix Final has always been a curse for them, but it was starting to seem like a curse on some kids they barely knew anymore, especially after last year’s win. Tessa’s gotten so good at setting aside her superstitions: handing her guards off to Patch instead of placing them just so on the boards, leaving the head-up safety pin off the inside of her dress, drinking whatever she feels like that day, although she often still feels like coffee mixed with hot chocolate. Now Scott knows she’s running through every GPF they’ve lost before, questioning whether the curse is back, whether they’re headed for a sequel to Sochi.

They’re getting the press conference over with, and for once, he’s the one with the better poker face. Yesterday’s short dance scores were bullshit, so low that even Patch reacted, but Scott was able to keep it light through the questions, even joking a bit with Gabi and Gui during the translations. With today’s free dance cementing their second place finish, though, the media round is fraught with tension. Scott takes the question, makes the usual noises about being pleased with their skates and having more work to do, even slipping in some compliments for the French that he tries not to notice they never return.

Tessa sits next to him, silent and uncharacteristically stony, despite the cameras. Scott can feel the world shrinking around her, the way one panel of judges over two years of competitions saying that they’re second best is becoming the end of everything. He squeezes her knee under the table and she shoots him a tight smile.

He’s not stupid enough to bitch about PCs and GOEs in public anymore, so he doesn’t say anything on the shuttle back to the hotel, waits until they’re done with physio and massages before wrapping Tessa in a hug. “It’s not the same,” he says. “Things are so different this time around.”

“Yeah,” she says into his shoulder. “Last time we were the artistic team with no technical foundation. Now we’re the technical team with no artistry.”

Scott can’t help but laugh at that, which makes Tessa laugh a little too. Then she steps back and sighs.

“It really is different,” Scott says. He releases her to grab two bottles of water out of the minifridge. He hands one to Tessa and sits on the bed, pulling her down next to him. “We’ve got coaches who are actually with us, we’re using our own music, it’s all on our terms. It’s for us, right?”

Tessa wrinkles her nose. “Now you’re just quoting the documentary.”

Scott laughs again. “Just because it’s media doesn’t mean it’s not true, I guess.” He takes a swig of his water. “Look, we’ll hit the rink with Marie-France and Sam and see what we can tweak in that second step sequence, but there’s no point in trying to twist ourselves into something we’re not. We knew the judging might go down like this. If they want to give out +3s for Gabi sitting in Gui’s lap, that’s what they’re going to do. I’d rather do it our way.”

Tessa nods, and Scott can see her making the decision to stop chasing her thoughts around that familiar track.

“Hey,” he says. He nudges his shoulder into hers. “For us.” It’s rapidly becoming their new key phrase. He takes her forgotten water bottle from her hands, cracks the cap and hands it back with a flourish. “And for you.”

She smiles, her first real smile of the day. “When did you get so wise, anyway?” she says, raising the bottle to her lips.

“I’ve always been wise,” he says loftily, and they laugh because it’s not true.

He’s still getting used to it, being this mature, less volatile Scott. Usually he’s the one getting it wrong with the press—too much Moir cockiness at the losses, too much Canadian humility at the wins. He still gets shit about calling the judging a piss-off six GPFs ago (even though it totally was) and forgetting his mic was on at World Team Trophy (even though everybody hates WTT). Meanwhile, admitting that _Funny Face_ wasn’t flawless at Worlds got turned into a story about Meryl and Charlie getting robbed (to be honest, that was on Tessa too, but she was so bothered by it that it felt like his fault).

Comeback Scott pays more attention to the media training, sticks to talking points, stresses Tessa out a whole lot less, hopefully, which in turn stresses him out less. Maybe one day he’ll conquer fidgeting and nail biting too.

Comeback Scott isn’t the only thing he’s still getting used to. It’s like he’s having trouble finding the line they used to toe, between selling the chemistry and overselling it. Sometimes the quotes seem blown out of proportion (as if he wouldn’t know that Tessa’s a restless sleeper by now), and other times he’s genuinely not sure if he meant to hint at more (was “doing it with your partner” an actual slip of the tongue or a deliberate setup for the moment he could act embarrassed and make the reporters laugh?). When the run-through of the short at Autumn Classic turned into feeling Tessa up in front of any judges who might have dropped by practice, he couldn’t tell if that was for their benefit, or to stay in character, or something else entirely. Sometimes he’s not sure he’s doing any salesmanship at all.

He’s probably just forgotten. It’s probably always been this easy to play things up with Tessa, but still, it feels different to him. The difference of the comeback spilling over, maybe. Or the time apart, that seventeen-month foray into being discrete people, changing the way they see each other.

He tells himself that it’s not that they’re both concurrently single for the first time in just about ever. Scott didn’t expect Tessa and Ryan to work out—it was hard not to think of him as Fedor 2.0 in different winter footwear—but he was genuinely surprised when things fell apart with Kaitlyn.

Scott knows it looks like he broke up with Kaitlyn to go back to competition or to go back to Tessa, and it probably would have gone better if that had been the case. The fact is that he’s always been in long distance relationships, and when it looked like things were changing, he freaked out like some kind of cartoon commitmentphobe. He really thought he could do it with Kaitlyn, that if he could do it with anybody, it would be her, which is why he had nodded along when she talked about moving from Winnipeg, about finding a new curling team, about houses and rings. By the time he figured out that he had thought wrong, it was too late.

Maybe that’s just how he is. Maybe Scott’s just not cut out for more than occasional visits, for getting invested in a girl who isn’t living across the country or constantly cheating on him. Of course, there’s always been one really big exception to that rule.

After he and Kaitlyn broke up, he sort of expected himself to start dating someone else right away, mostly because it’s what he does. He’s a girlfriend guy; before the breakup, he’d spent a cumulative six months of his adult life single. It’s a little weird that he hasn’t dived into something else yet.

But sometimes he wonders if he has. If he’s not really as single as he thinks he is, if he is in fact in yet another serious relationship. If he’s maybe always been in this relationship, and the fact that they haven’t had sex since that one time makes the relationship more complicated but no less real.

Whatever it is, he’s not allowed to think about it. After all, not everything is different.

“We should probably get food,” Tessa says, leaning across him for the room service menu so her ponytail falls in his face. It smells like some kind of fruity shampoo.

Scott kicks off his shoes and pulls himself up against the headboard while he waits for her to make her choices. He fishes around the nightstand for the remote, but pauses before turning the tv on. “You’re still glad we came back, right?”

Tessa looks up from the menu. “Of course. You?”

Last year, when they finished the short dance at Skate Canada, their first competitive skate since Sochi, he suddenly realized how scared he’d been that they’d never feel that way again. Feeling that with Tessa is worth any amount of ISU bullshit and emotional no man’s land.

“Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

 

 _And all I do is miss you and the way we used to be_  
_All I do is keep the beat and bad company_  
_All I do is kiss you through the bars of Orion_  
_Juliet, I'd do the stars with you anytime_

 

There are lots of parts to winning.

There’s the medal ceremony, warbling the new gender-neutral anthem with Scott’s uneven tenor in her ear. Before that, there was the flower ceremony, when stuffed tigers were handed out and she couldn’t keep the tears completely at bay. There was the part when Patch saw the scores and serenely leaned over to tell her that it was enough, and the part right after that, when the number one flashed on the screen and Scott jumped up, just like in Vancouver, but then immediately hauled her off her feet into his arms, not like Vancouver at all.

But the part that she thinks of as the win itself, the real win, is the moment the music stopped and Scott flipped her from dying Satine into a hug so tight she found bruises on her back later. It’s burned into her memory, the look on his face as he skated back from her before pushing forward to scoop her up again. It’s the feeling of having had the skate of their lives, singing from her body to his and back again. Right then, she knew it was a win regardless of the score, regardless of the standings. It was a win in the only way that really counted.

Of course, that’s a lot easier to say with a gold medal around her neck, but it still feels true as she and Scott dole out soundbites to the press. They’re veterans by now, more adept at fielding questions about upcoming retirement and judging controversies and, yes, their relationship. What she wasn’t expecting is the way the relationship has become the main story, with the actual skating treated as a sidebar.

It’s not enough to bring down the high of the win, but it’s a bit of shock to learn what a juggernaut the Tessa-and-Scott story has become outside their Olympic bubble. There’s an odd tone to some of the interviews, like maybe they’re not a couple because nobody’s suggested it before. It’s amusing, or maybe insulting, this assumption that the idea has simply never occurred to them, that they haven’t, in their own way, explicitly discussed it. Even CBC gets in on the act, and there’s something amazing to Tessa about the fact that the Canadian government has used taxpayer dollars to make a fanvid so viewers can see Scott cry.

Not everything is so gently presented. Jordan shows her a selection of articles written about them, the most provocatively titled of which is “Are Virtue and Moir Fucking or What?” Tessa blushes to her hairline when she sees it, but when she shows it to Scott in turn, he shrugs.

“I mean, we kind of did it to ourselves, right?” he says. “We’ve been selling a product, we can’t blame people for buying it.” His nonchalance is almost convincing.

“We’re not doing anything that Kaitlyn and Andrew aren’t doing,” she says. “If anything, they’re being more over the top.”

“Well . . . Kaitlyn and Andrew didn’t win,” Scott says, matter-of-factly. “If this is the price of winning, I think I’m willing to pay it.” He tries not to smirk.

Tessa attempts to look chastising but can’t quite manage it, sportsmanship and Team Canada spirit be damned. Then she shifts awkwardly. “It just feels a lot more intense than it’s been before.”

He nods, more serious. “It’s probably all the social media,” he says. “You know, Tweeter, Facebox, all that. But we can handle this however you want. Tell me what tack you want to take.”

She’s not even sure. “Maybe you could drop the business partners thing? It’s clearly not working.”

Scott laughs. “It’s really not.”

The interviews quickly become boring, hitting the same three notes: how did it feel, will this be the last, are you dating are you dating are you dating? The saving grace of the repetition is being able to recycle the same workshopped lines: such an honor, we’ll have to let the dust settle, what a compliment, followed by the bridge over to storytelling on the ice. It goes against all their media training to give a straight answer when a curved one will do, and so they keep powering through. Besides, Tessa thinks the deflection speaks for itself: we’re here to talk about skating, about this incredible thing we did, not to showcase our personal lives for public amusement. There’s some irony to that last bit, but she and Scott have done enough of that for their two lifetimes.

And yeah, maybe there’s a part of her that doesn’t want to simply say no, for reasons she instinctively shies away from examining.

They expect the fascination to die down once the Olympics are over, as it always has before. But when they get back from Korea, it’s even worse. The only difference is that the question has shifted from “Are you a couple?” to “Does it annoy you that people keep asking you if you’re a couple?” which is just extremely Canadian. It seems like the only way to get this to stop is face it head on.

They’re at _Tout le Monde en Parle_ , which is already a bit of a struggle because of the translators in their ears, and it doesn’t help that Scott looks vaguely alien in the pancake makeup they’ve slathered on him. Tessa jumped the gun a bit in anticipating The Question but managed to finally lay down the definitive denial: non, nous ne sommes pas un couple. Now Scott is regaling the audience with that beloved mythology of their childhood romance.

“And in order to be productive on the ice and to actually start talking to each other, we had to break up that hot and heavy relationship,” he says. “So we’re nervous to go back because now we have a great relationship and we want to make sure we protect against that.” It’s a joke that gets the right laughs, and it’s built on the truth, the way everything is.

But _is_ it the truth? Sometimes Tessa wonders if _the relationship_ has been reified into some untouchable idol, so sacred that they’ve stopped questioning the rituals they dance around it. It’s hard to imagine interrupting the rhythm of pushing the idea away, but surely _the relationship_ is stronger than their delicate handling suggests.

Other times she thinks that it was never really about being scared of damaging the skating, the friendship. They’re damn good skaters and even better friends. That’s why everybody thinks they should be together, after all. You add up the intimacy and the longevity and the chemistry and it should spell duh. But Tessa’s always resisted locking in that final factor. It’s not lost on her that all of Scott’s girlfriends have been similar to her, at least superficially; hell, his celebrity crush is Reese Witherspoon in the one movie where she plays a green-eyed brunette who gets engaged to her best friend in a London, Ontario rink. Tessa’s gone in the other direction, dated guys who weren’t only not Scott Moir, but who were about as unlike Scott Moir as possible.

She doesn’t know that she believes that any one person can be all things to someone else, and if she and Scott were together that’s how it would have to be: best friends, confidantes, business partners, yes, and then the romantic part on top of all that. It’s a lot of eggs for one basket, and if the structure of the basket were to change, they’d all come tumbling out. There’s something suffocating about the prospect of having to stay so precariously balanced, of being so thoroughly known that she has nowhere to hide, and so she’s leaned away from it, searching elsewhere for fresh air.

And yet, since the comeback, she can’t help but notice that it’s easier to breathe with Scott around. Easier than it was in the years before the hiatus, and definitely easier than during, when she was as free as she’s ever been.

The day before their flight to Japan, they meet up at the Ilderton rink to run through the new ex. Even with an extra practice, “You Rock My World” is going to be a little underrehearsed, but that’s to be expected. It’s a fun piece with a lot of hip hop movement, and Scott’s come a long way with the style since they first started working with Sam. He’s come a long way as a dancer, period, from the days when Tessa had to remember all his steps for him. She likes to think she’s almost caught up to him in skating skills. They’ve grown towards each other, and up and out.

Scott’s already on the ice when she walks in, and when he skates over to her, she can see he’s on edge.

“What’s up?” she says. He looks like a guilty puppy.

“I think I did something stupid,” he says. “Or at least that’s what Cara tells me.”

Which means something social media-related, which means something entertaining. “Did you accidentally tweet a dick pic?”

Scott lets out a nervous laugh. “God, no. Why would I . . . No.” He clears his throat. “Actually, it has to do with you.”

“Oh?”

He rubs his neck. “After the game, when I was taking pictures with people . . . I guess some girls posted them to Instagram with a caption—is caption the right word? That said I had turned them down for drinks because I needed to get home to you.”

“Oh.”

“I don’t remember saying that!” Scott rushes to explain. “Maybe I did by accident? Or maybe they were making some kind of joke and I went along with it and they misinterpreted? Or maybe—”

“Scott, it’s fine.” His hands are so fidgety. She grabs them and clasps them between her own. “Really, it’s no big deal.”

“Are you sure? I know how sick you are of all the questions. I don’t want to be making things worse.” His eyebrows are doing that thing.

She laughs. “I’m sure. Come on, let’s skate.”

There was a time when Tessa wouldn’t have been so sure, when this would have been her problem to deal with alone, with Scott either oblivious to why it bothered her or pretending to be oblivious. But now that she’s not the only one who worries about these things, her problem has become their problem. Which means it’s not actually a problem at all.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to Scott and Tessa for not saying anything in their podcast interviews that would joss this. Also, wrote the final scene last week before the HD footage of "Shape of You" came out, but if life wants to imitate art, I certainly wouldn't mind.

_Juliet, when we made love, you used to cry_  
_You said, I love you like the stars above, I'll love you till I die_  
_There's a place for us, you know the movie song_  
_When you gonna realize it was just that the time was wrong, Juliet?_

 

This is how dancing works: one person advances, the other retreats, and the space between them remains constant. Lately Tessa doesn’t seem to be retreating when Scott advances. She doesn’t find an excuse to casually skate away when he hugs her a little too tightly during practice. She doesn’t break the tension with a joke when he stares at her a little too long, his eyes flicking to her mouth. Sometimes she even licks her lips. It’s becoming harder for him to hold the frame.

Rules are always a little different on tour, especially post-Olympics tour, but not every night is a party. They’d die, for one thing; he and Tessa are booked up through July at least. This is the time to earn while they can, while they’re as commercially valuable as they’ll ever be. Tessa’s been working overtime on building her brand, back to saying yes to everything: tv takeovers and magazine shoots and endorsement stuff, all on top of their usual schedule of sports symposiums and nonprofit events. Well, yes to almost everything. She turns down _Dancing with the Stars_ since it means dancing with some stranger, and Scott feels a little guilty about how relieved he is.

He doesn’t know how she does it all. Not just the appearances themselves, but branding stuff, controlling her image. He thought he was in the clear with all his neutral statements in the press conferences and interviews, but his behavior at the women’s hockey game keeps getting brought up and now he somehow has a beer fridge waiting for him in Montreal, neither of which work with the role model thing he was going for. He squeezes in a visit to his niece’s class between Japan and the Canadian tour, but by the time they leave for Halifax, getting back to rehearsals feels like a break. And yeah, there are a lot of nights out, especially before the Leafs get knocked out of the playoffs, but there are also plenty of nights he stays in alone, and even more when it’s only him and Tessa.

They have a day off and Scott’s burned out on sightseeing, so Tessa comes over for a movie. Now that Baz Luhrmann has closed the circle on their mutual appreciation society, she thinks they should familiarize themselves with his canon, starting with _Strictly Ballroom_. Scott knows he’s seen it before—there aren’t a lot of dance movies he hasn’t seen at some point—but it’s been a while at least. He finds it more entertaining than relatable, but Tessa keeps tapping her foot against his from her side of the hotel bed. “Come on, you’re not identifying at all with the handsome, dark-haired dancer named Scott who just can’t seem to win against the evil federation head?”

“Handsome, eh?” He cocks an eyebrow at her. “I dunno, T, I think we’ve won a few things. And I’d never be in the position of trying out a new partner.” He tilts his head at the brightly ruffled Latin dance costumes. “Didn’t Poirier have sleeves like that in the short?”

The movie ends faster than he’d like, with a paso doble finale that gives him big _Farrucas_ feelings. It’s still early, and _Romeo + Juliet_ is next chronologically, so Tessa puts it on. Scott’s not so much for Leo or the language, but it’s a good soundtrack, aside from that Cardigans song Jim uses to torture Karen on that one episode of _The Office_. He’s sort of wishing that they could have found a way to squeeze “When Doves Cry” into their Prince medley.

The truth is that he’s always had a bit of a suspension of disbelief problem with the story. Aren’t Romeo and Juliet supposed to be, like, teenagers? And they’re getting married, killing each other’s cousins, throwing their lives away for what probably would have turned out to be some fleeting crush? What did they think would happen?

And yet despite all that, he’s getting caught up in the romance. It’s all that spinny, heady feeling that he loved with _Moulin Rouge_ , that feeling that makes him think: Tessa. It’s probably Baz’s fault that by the time Claire and Leo are making out in the pool, he’s acutely aware of her body, now snuggled into his. His mind keeps flashing back to another time they watched a movie together, and he has to fight the urge to look at her. If he does, he might kiss her. He really wants to kiss her.

Reflexively, he pushes the thought away. He’s nothing if not disciplined; he’s spent two decades as an elite athlete.

Except.

He’s not anymore. They’re not anymore. They haven’t officially announced retirement—the comeback has taught them to never say never—but it feels different than after Sochi. Every time they discuss it, they agree that they’ve probably seen the last of amateur ice.

It’s not the only thing that feels different. There’s the certainty that their lives will still be entwined, by choice now, not chains. Scott can’t seem to find in himself that old fear that they need skating to tether themselves to each other. After all, they’ve come back together once already. It’s like going from a closed hold to a no-touch step sequence; he doesn’t have to cling to her to know she’s there, perfectly in sync with him.

It seems like she’s in sync with him about this too, this wanting, but it doesn’t make it easier to look at directly. He keeps his eyes on the screen.

Scott’s gone over it, the reasons it wouldn’t work, the things that could tank them, and he’s come to the conclusion that the biggest obstacle would be exactly that: being so afraid of getting it wrong that they can’t get it right, looking so hard for any little flaw that might be the end that they see nothing but flaws. If they were to do this thing, they’d have to be as fully committed as launching into a rotational lift, with no room for mid-motion hesitation.

The Olympics are over, their amateur careers are probably over, but the stakes are higher than ever. They’re celebrities now, kind of, which is weird because they’re just figure skaters, regular figure skaters, not like Adam Rippon who’s been a celebrity in skater disguise since he was in juniors. Stars on Ice crowds giving them standing ovations before they even start their skates is insane enough, but lately Scott can’t go to a bar without Cara telling him later that a video ended up on Instagram with the hashtag #sorrytessa. It would be bad enough if he fucked things up under normal circumstances—he can almost persuade himself that they’re strong enough for this, that they’d get through it no matter what—but to fail so publicly . . . There’s a non-zero possibility that things might really be ruined, which is a bigger possibility than he can allow.

He could also just . . . _not_ kiss her. They could stay friends. Date other people. Marry other people. Have families with other people, the way he joked about on _Ellen_. Ha. Ha.

Eventually Claire Danes blows her brains out and the movie ends, but the wanting doesn’t. He tries to shake it off as he walks Tessa out, but it’s only intensifying.

“That was fun,” she says. She steps slowly into the doorway, not quite moving into the hall. Turns to face him. He’s got his foot wedged against the door to keep it from closing on her. “ _Moulin Rouge_ next time? Or if you’re sick of it, we could skip to _Australia_.”

“I’m not sick of it.” Scott can barely pay attention to her words. He’s too focused on what the rest of her is saying. “I could watch it again.”

Tessa’s nodding. “Good.” She makes no move to leave. Her eyes are fixed on his.

The way he’s lingering, there’s no way she doesn’t know about the wanting, and the way she’s lingering, he can tell she also wants. He can feel her waiting for him.

He knows her every tell and she knows his, but she wants him to lay down his cards first. She’s nervous, maybe even more nervous than he is, and he knows how her doubts and fears can drag her in circles. He can see her breathing, the way she’s working to resist them. It would be such a relief for her to let go. In almost everything else off the ice, she’s the one who decides, but if he leads now, she’ll follow.

He moves into her dance space.

There’s a moment when he’s too stunned by the realization that he’s actually kissing her to take anything else in. But then she’s kissing him back, and it’s so much. He thought she’d taste like strawberries or champagne, something romantic and ethereal, but instead she tastes like the Coffee Crisp they were eating earlier, and incredibly, that’s even better. She makes some sort of noise and he folds her into his body, his palm running up her spine, his fingers tangling in her hair. Her hand is clutching his shirt, and then it’s sliding up underneath the hem.

He pulls her back inside, letting the door close behind her. She never does get around to going back to her room, and this time, Scott remembers everything.

 

 _And a lovestruck Romeo sings the streets a serenade_  
_Laying everybody low with a love song that he made_  
_Finds a convenient streetlight, steps out of the shade_  
_Says something like_

 

Tessa’s thought a lot about chick sexing.

She once read an article about chick sexers, the people who determine whether baby chickens are male or female. They all look the same, little balls of fluff, and it’s almost impossible to tell which is which without a DNA test. But there are experts who can sort through them with astonishing accuracy and speed. They can’t explain how they know, and they can’t teach others how to do it. The only way to become a chick sexer is to get a box of chicks and start guessing. Keep guessing long enough, and eventually the guesses turn out to be right.

It’s all about gut feelings, and as someone who’s naturally suspicious of her own, Tessa finds it fascinating. She knows, rationally, that intuition is a logical response to stimuli so minute that the conscious brain doesn’t register them. She knows that it’s often more accurate than the conscious brain itself. But she’s so used to second guessing herself that it’s hard to separate her first reaction from the one that comes right after it, telling her she’s wrong.

Except for some things.

There have been times that she’s watched tape with someone who doesn’t skate, someone who doesn’t understand how she can instantly spot a flat or a weak launching position or a sloppy rocker. “It looks fine to me,” they’ll say, and then she’ll slow it down so they can see. But she knows that the initial spotting looks like magic, like looking at a yellow fuzzball and knowing if it’s a hen or a rooster. She doesn’t have an explanation other than that she’s spent most of her waking life looking at blades on ice and now she can just _feel_ when it’s right or wrong.

And it’s the same with Scott. Years of trial and error have honed their ability to sense each other. They’ve gotten it wrong plenty of times, but less and less. Chick sexers don’t even know what they’re looking for at first, but they pick it up in the end. Somewhere between Jordan and Cara deciding that they were dating and their third gold medals, Scott and Tessa have just picked each other up.

She’s never been good at trusting her gut, but she’s always trusted Scott. And somehow, from the moment he kisses her, she knows that this is going to be good. She can’t tell how she knows, but she knows.

When she hears the beeping, Tessa reaches to snooze the alarm before realizing it’s not her phone. The time on the display slowly comes into focus and she stares at it, sluggishly trying to do the math.

“You’ve got just long enough to go back and shower before we’re supposed to meet for videos,” Scott says, leaning over her shoulder. “Sorry, I should have reset the alarm last night, built in some time for us to talk.”

Tessa rolls over to face him. She’s positive that he’s only been awake for as long as she has, but he’s already characteristically bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

“Hi,” he says, a smile playing around the corners of his mouth.

She squints at him. Maybe even bushier-tailed than usual.

She sits up, blinks the sand out of her eyes. “Hi,” she croaks. She clears her throat. “I mean, hi.”

He laughs. When she’s slow to react, a shadow crosses his face.

She brushes it away with her hand, her thumb on his jaw, her fingers feather light against his temple. “Still waking up.” She gives him a drowsy smile. “Probably a good thing we won’t get to talk til later. I’ll have better word brain then.”

She can see him trying not to look too eager. “After practice? I’ll grab some food, meet you at your room?”

“I’ve got a call with Nivea,” she says. “But after that?”

It’s a little awkward gathering her clothes from last night and putting them back on, but Scott stops her before she opens the door, leans in to kiss her. She doesn’t even have a chance to feel self-conscious about her breath before she’s falling into it, letting it surround her. By the time she surfaces with a gasp, she is fully awake.

Scott leans back against the wall, breathing hard. “Tessa,” he says.

“I’m gonna be late.” She has to bite her lip to keep from grinning. “I’ll see you later.” She presses her lips to his one last, light time, then slips into the hallway.

She’s not late, as it turns out. She’s not early either; she’s just on time, like normal, like this is a normal day. Scott greets her with Starbucks as usual—when did he have time to run out?—and the only difference is something in his face, something that’s probably invisible to everybody else, people who haven’t spent a lifetime sorting his expressions.

They’re filming promo videos, and then there’s a meet-and-greet with a local nonprofit. Tessa automatically positions herself between Scott and the bizarre turtle mascot for the photos, finds herself giving the camera her real smile instead of her press conference face. Afterwards, she splits off to grab lunch at catering while Scott and the guys work on the boy’s number.

“You’re in a good mood,” observes Kaitlyn over her sandwich.

“Am I?” says Tessa. She tries to wipe her smirk off with her napkin.

Kaitlyn rolls her eyes. “Fine, keep your secrets.”

Tessa and Scott don’t end up seeing each other again until the “Shape of You” run-through that afternoon. She’s never really listened to the lyrics; she tends to focus on the beat rather than the words. But Scott’s singing along like he always does, and when he looks at her and mouths “Last night you were in my room and now my bedsheets smell like you,” it’s all she can do to keep from dissolving into giggles. She doesn’t, of course. She’s a professional.

She expects to be similarly distracted through _Moulin Rouge_ , but the opposite is true. It’s never been easier to lose herself in the character. She’s just as surprised as Scott when she joins him in singing along to “Come What May.”

Once they finish up, they stroke around the rink for a while, just keeping warm until everybody else is ready for the finale. Usually they’re talking the whole time, but today Tessa’s almost afraid to say anything. If she starts, she’s not sure she’ll be able to stop. Scott doesn’t start either, just squeezes her hand and smiles like he’s trying not to burst out laughing.

She rushes through the Nivea call. It’s only when she hangs up that she realizes that since Scott’s already on his way, wrapping it up early doesn’t get him there faster. She’s got a little time before their talk, but she doesn’t need it. She’s ready.

Tessa lies back on the bed, feeling oddly calm. It seems like she should be nervous, pacing the room or obsessively checking her phone. Instead, she closes her eyes and thinks about the worst times, the times she wasn’t sure if they’d make it as partners. She thinks about how they always did.

She’s trying not to make assumptions, but she feels sure about what’s coming. She feels fearless. She’s as certain as she can be about what Scott’s going to say, and she’s ready to agree with him once he gets a chance to say it.

As for the logistics, she’s got that figured out too. She’s been thinking about it all day. Obviously, there’s nothing to be gained by going super public, but it doesn’t have to be some sort of clandestine thing either. People are going to speculate either way, and a little extra handsiness won’t change that. They can go the Tati and Max route, not making any kind of announcement until there’s something that needs to be announced. She shivers a little, thinking about the possibilities.

Time to deal with that later. Until then, the plan will be both feet in, but keeping it quiet. Or maybe not. Maybe it’ll end up some other way, one of the other ways she’s considered, weighed, imagined. Or maybe even some way she hasn’t been able to imagine. There are a lot of things that have been even better than she could have ever imagined.

There’s a knock at her door. It’s Scott.

 

_You and me, babe, how about it?_

**Author's Note:**

> Dire Straits original or Killers’ cover recommended, Indigo Girls’ not so much.


End file.
